PHILADELPHIA — Outside of the one-olefactory-word fan refrain that the Phillies were familiar with long before the Matt Klentak Era, it might be a challenge to characterize their 2018 season.

Especially since it was really two distinct halves.

There was the first half, which essentially began in April and went all the way to Aug. 7. That included a period of new veterans, young hopefuls and a few wide-eyed holdover Phils getting to know each other, and getting to know a somewhat left-field leaning manager in Gabe Kapler. Then they promptly leaned on starting pitching and the occasional timely home run to win more than their expected share of games, even leading the NL East for a while.

Then came the other half, which went from Aug. 7 to the end Sunday. With wins in their last two games, the Phillies were able to promise better things ahead for 2019. Maybe there were a few snickers to that, not surprising since prior to those last two wins, they had gone 14-33 in that post-Aug. 7 stretch. A much shorter time frame than the other half, for sure, but those seven weeks were so awful they felt like an entire bad half of a baseball season.

"The last six weeks have been about as hard a professional six-week period as I've ever been through," the 38-year-old Klentak said of his third season as a Phillies GM. "I'm not alone in this organization in feeling that. I know that's true for our fans as well. It's been really hard."

Which is why, with the season's end mercifully at hand, Klentak is choosing to take a half-full approach to the offseason.

"We live in a very binary world, where it's either black or it's white," Klentak said. "It's either good or it's bad. There's no in-between. But the reality of this season was for four months, we were a much-improved team having a ton of fun winning a lot of baseball games and doing a lot of things well. We were significantly ahead of expectations, internal and external expectations. We were on a good roll. And then, for two months, the air came out of the balloon. We were not good at all. It was bad.

"We don’t have to look at 2018 as solely a good season or a bad season. It was both in a lot of ways but if you look at the body of work over 162 games we made incredible strides on the pitching side of things, we won 14 more games, we outperformed our preseason expectations. That’s not to minimize how dreadful the final six weeks were."

Uh, Matt ... actually it was seven. But we digress.

The long stretch of losing, which culminated in a mind-blowing nine-straight losing streak in which they were outscored 70-21 before ending Saturday at Aaron Nola's healing hand, was so bad that Klentak felt compelled to assure everyone that Kapler would be back as manager next season. Really, it would have been hard to fire a guy one season into his contract, especially after he had a club of poor defense, inconsistent hitting and tired pitching in contention for the division as long as he did.

Saying Kapler learned early on to make "adjustments," and do so "without ego," Klentak also acknowledged the manager's style and decision-making is, well, a little different. Then the GM defended the difference.

"This team just rolled out there in a conventional style would not have made the playoffs," Klentak said. "In fact, it would have been worse than (what) this year's team (did). The fact that we've outperformed our run-differential (an ugly minus-51) as much as we have, I think speaks to the fact that we probably did pretty well in the area of putting our players in the best positions to succeed. As the roster evolves and we have more, quote-unquote, regular players, I think you'll see that less and less."

Somehow then, the Phillies players have to be content with the opinion of manager and GM that they needed to be pulled from games early on and often didn't have set spots in the batting order or on the field because ... they're just that kind of team.

Got it.

"For me, when you're talking about a manager over anybody in a position of leadership, that is one of the single most important attributes a person can have, is a willingness to adjust and acknowledge when they've made a mistake and do something different," Klentak said of Kapler. "He has proven that to us all year long. I'm not going to sit up here and criticize him, but I do think that part of what Kap learned this year is perception matters. Through some unfortunate or very high profile incidents, he started off in a bit of a hole and did an excellent job of recovering from it for four months. At the end as the team has struggled, I certainly recognize the spotlight is back on him. I'm not at all worried about Kap's work ethic or willingness to adjust and lead this group going forward."

"Again, some of his mistakes have been very high profile. I think he has handled them very well."

As for other potential mistakes, Klentak defended his choice of free agents, with Jake Arrieta (10 wins for his $30 million base salary this season) and Carlos Santana leading the way, saying Arrieta "brought a ton to this team," and Santana – whose average slipped about 30 points but power numbers held true to previous levels – "was good for our team from a leadership perspective, from an offensive perspective, from a defensive perspective, from a consistency perspective."

But Santana wound up playing third base over the last couple of weeks because bonafide star Rhys Hoskins finally acknowledged he's more comfortable playing first. Then there's other roster mysteries...

How hard will Klentak try to trade Odubel Herrera because Roman Quinn took the centerfield job out from under him?

How hard will Klentak try to trade Cesar Hernandez to open an infield spot for J.P. Crawford? Or will Crawford go?

Will Klentak open the vault for Manny Machado? Or make any effort to re-sign late rental guys like Wilson Ramos or even Jose Bautista?

"There have been some really important answers for this franchise this year but by no means does that mean that we have all of them," Klentak said. "There are still a lot of things that we need to address both this coming offseason and in future offseasons.

"There’s really nobody in that clubhouse that you would say this guy has to move on. But at the same time ... we know that this club needs to improve. So we are not just going to run back with the same 40 man roster next year that we finished this season with. I think there’s probably going to be some changes. Whether it is one or two or three or four, I can’t tell you yet."

Yet in a rebuild that has slipped through its fourth year still weighed down by uncertainty, you wonder how much time is at his disposal.